Untitled I, Chapter 1

"Oh no. No no no no no no no."

Billy has never killed anyone before. There is the click of plastic on pavement as the murder weapon drops from his hand. Whoever this guy was, he never even got the chance to put on a proper shocked expression before he died. There he lies, still wearing a smug half grin and vacant stare like he's looking right through Billy at something far more interesting. Well, he's staring with one eye, anyway. Most of the left side of his face is covered by that smoking crater.

He's young. At least, he looks young. You never can tell with these guys. He's hairless, and his pale skin looks sick in the oily streetlight filtering into the alley, but his build says this was once the body of a lithe, active man. He's wearing the same gray jumpsuit they all wear, with the same sideways figure eight on his forehead.

What was he doing down here? Billy wonders aloud to no one in particular, pretending for a moment that it matters. Billy's mind is beginning to recover from the shock of his first manslaughter offense, but each second some new horrific detail stands out and is announced by an increasingly unpleasant tightening sensation in his chest.

He is standing over the dead body of an immortal. In a neighborhood like Billy's they are practically legendary. The procedure to transform a normal human being into a partially synthetic is invasive, time-consuming, and most of all, expensive. As a result, it is only the extremely wealthy who undergo the transformation. Everyone believes they'll get there some day, though.

Billy looks down at the gun, hesitates a moment before he picks it up. It doesn't mater. It's covered with his fingerprints, and registered in his name. His stomach turns again. It's almost weightless but still unwieldy with the careless lack of ergonomics that is the trademark of discount products everywhere.

The laser pistol was a gift from his mother. He didn't want it, but she wouldn't take no for answer. She said it was a rough neighborhood and he should carry some kind of protection. The irony is lost on Billy who is trying not to hyperventilate.

He manages to calm himself. No one else saw this happen. The guy was out in a bad neighborhood in the middle of the night.

Billy jumps, startled by a high-pitched wail coming from behind and above his head. He turns to face it, reflexively shielding his eyes from a blinding spotlight. Between the deafening notes of the alarm, he can make out the rapid click-click-click of an computerized camera.

A different flash of light and the alley is silent again. The floating machine crashes to the ground in a heap of smoldering circuits and melted plastic. Billy is up and running.